August 18, 2021

How Old Is This Giant? In March 2020, archaeologists traveled to a hilltop in Dorset, England, to slice into a giant and take bits of him back to their labs in bags and metal tubes. No actual behemoth was harmed in the process, because the Cerne Abbas Giant is a geoglyph—a large artwork emblazoned into the landscape whose actual origin has been clothed in mystery. Now, scientists established that the giant was born between A.D. 700 and A.D. 1100 in the late Saxon or early medieval period. How did they do it? Oh, by using laser beams and snails.  READ MORE → GASTRO OBSCURA Stock Native American Foods When the pandemic forced Ben Jacobs and Matt Chandra to temporarily close their restaurant Tocabe, which highlighted products from Native American tribes and tribal citizens in the United States, they pondered the idea of opening an online Native American food marketplace. Enter Tocabe Indigenous Marketplace, which launched in June. The intention behind the online market is simple: for Indigenous producers to come together and sell their goods. Currently, there are around 30 products, from bison steaks to blue corn mush, offered on the site. READ MORE → BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA Sculpture of Oliver Pollock The dollar sign, a founding father, an outdoor concert space in Baton Rouge: this seemingly disjointed collection of words are woven together in the story behind a sculpture located in Louisiana’s capital city. The bronze sculpture located near Baton Rouge’s modern downtown library depicts Oliver Pollock, and is one of the few, if perhaps the only, depictions of this otherwise unknown hero and financier of the American Revolution. READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA COURSES Foraging & Folklore Explore food, festivals, and folklore associated with harvest season across the globe in this four-part lecture series with herbalist and forager Felicity Roberts. Additionally, you’ll gain insights into how to forage safely and sustainably in your neighborhood. Starts tomorrow! LEARN MORE → FROM THE ARCHIVES NYC’s Subway Origins New York City’s subway may be ubiquitous today, but it had to first come from somewhere. The subway stations that we know today rose from the ground, built by sweating laborers and straining workers—and all that is captured in the photographs from brothers Pierre and Granville Pullis, who documented the first days and years of the New York City subway system. Pierre and Granville took tens of thousands of photographs of stations, equipment, construction sites, and the people who built the stations, as well as the pedestrians who would eventually wedge themselves onto the trains. READ MORE → AVERARA, ITALY Averara Skeletons Behind the church of San Giacomo in Averara is an octagonal building, which resembles a baptistery. Five of its sides are adorned with a skeleton, while the other three sides have obviously been painted over. It may seem incongruous (or certainly unusual) to have skeletons adorning a place where new-born babies are baptised. Could it be that the disciplinati wanted to remind new-born babies that they have to die? Possible. Could it be that the paintings were done after the building had been decommissioned as a baptistery? Also possible. READ MORE → THE ATLAS OBSCURA PODCAST Mississippi River Basin Model In the 1940s, when engineers needed to model a complex system, they would build amazingly elaborate scale models. None, however, were on the scale of the Mississippi River Basin Model, which is the largest small-scale model ever built, representing 41% of the US in miniature, and the more than 15,000 miles of rivers that make up the Mississippi river basin. In this episode, we walk through a scale model of the massive river basin, one that will have you feeling like a giant, striding from Baton Rouge to Omaha in an hour. FROM THE ARCHIVES Meet Your Local Cryptid From a creature that’s more rabbit than human, to a herd of extremely local Bigfoots, to a mad scientist’s escaped “Melon Heads,” our readers told us about a wide variety of incredible beasties from their regional folklore. The truth is out there… but the myths are a lot more fun. READ MORE → GIBRALTAR Secret Chamber in the Rock of Gibraltar The Rock of Gibraltar’s reputation as a war tool is well established. The British Army dug a maze of defensive tunnels inside the rock during the Second World War, and the massive cliff is famous for the more than 30 miles of cleared space that served as a housing area for guns, ammunition, barracks, and even hospitals for wounded soldiers. But hidden in the famous rock is a secret chamber, known as the “Stay Behind Cave,” which was the site of a top secret World War II plot called Operation Tracer. READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA EXPERIENCES Drawing Animal Details Want to explore the intersection between science and art through pencil and paper? In this online experience you'll explore the fundamentals of drawing creatures while brushing up on your science and natural history knowledge. In this episode, host Megan McGrath will explore adding realistic details, like fur and feathers, using texture, value, and shading. LEARN MORE →